In spider themselves: How arachnophobes are facing their fears ...

Deborah Gough

Georgina Connell would do anything to avoid a spider – even jump from a moving vehicle.

"I was a passenger in a car at uni and a huntsman walked across the dashboard. I opened the door and jumped out of the car," Georgina says.

"It was going 40 or 50 kays downhill. I was fine and so was the spider. They caught it and let it go," she says.

The sight of a living, crawling a spider used to unleash a "full-blown panic attack" complete with shaking, crying and hyperventilating for this long-time arachnophobe.

"It reached the point that I had to sleep with the light on because if something brushed against my skin I would have to wake up scan the room and know there wasn't a spider in there. There never was but I still needed to leave the light on," Georgina says.

"I couldn't function. It was quite severe."

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It was not as if Georgina's early life was free of creepy-crawlies – she grew up on a farm in Deniliquin, NSW. The Firbank College, Canterbury, graduate is also used to seeing her crawling nemesis at the country RSL club where she works as duty manager.

"Working in the RSL club I have got to go into the furnace [room] or out the back into storerooms. It doesn't look that good if a staff member comes to me and I have to say, 'I can't do that, there is a spider there'," she says.

But after a five-hour workshop with invertebrate specialist Patrick Honan, Georgina can now pose with a spider.

Mr Honan says about 5 per cent of Australians have arachnophobia, and actively alter their lives to avoid spiders. About 50 per cent of women and 30 per cent of men are merely afraid of spiders.

Spiders are misunderstood, Mr Honan says, who regards the fear of spiders as a "Western construct". In other continents spiders are either ignored, idolised and/or eaten.

"It is not deeply ingrained and not part of the genetic make-up of humans, it is just something that we have been brought up to do," Mr Honan says.

There's no denying spiders in popular culture are either monsters or symbols of impending doom.

"People who are afraid of spiders say they are worried about being bitten or them crawling onto them," he says. "People with arachnophobia are repulsed by the way they look and the way they move."

With over 4000 spiders in Australia, arachnophobes need help to overcome their fear, says Mr Horan, who developed a workshop with the help of aptly named psychologist Merryn Snare.

The workshop provides spider facts – for example, only two Australian spiders can kill, and no one has died since the antivenom became available.

"Usually there is an incident that leads someone to seek treatment," Mr Honan says.

Ms Snare uses deep relaxation, breathing and self-talk to help participants overcome the fear of confronting a spider. They discuss why they fear spiders and what it means to give up that fear.

"For a lot of people it is part of their personality," Ms Snare says.

"Sometimes it makes them feel a bit special – that people will do things for them because they are afraid, that everyone knows they are afraid of spiders – it is who they are. They need to think about how they will feel once they are no longer afraid and why they hang onto that fear when they know the facts about spiders," she says.

Ms Snare says it often takes several months for sufferers to get up the courage to do something about their fear of spiders. All participants have willingly taken part in a "meet the spiders" session where they have been up close to, touched or held, a spider or spider skin.

For Georgina, learning to breathe easy and talk herself out of panicking about spiders has empowered her. She has even encountered another "car spider".

"I had a spider in the car the other day. In the past it would have caused me to hit the brakes quite hard, but I caught it in my hand and let it out the window," she says.